Taskbar - Change Icon Button Width Size

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    Taskbar - Change Icon Button Width Size

    Taskbar - Change Icon Button Width Size

    How to Change the Windows 7 Taskbar Icon Width Size
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    Designer Media Ltd


    How to Change the Windows 7 Taskbar Icon Width Size

       Information
    While Windows 7 offers the nice feature of grouping programs and combining them into a stack, not everyone enjoys this. Some may want just the icons without the stacking feature. In other words, it's like having "Never combine, hide labels" or "Combine when full, hide labels" option. Alternatively you can use this to manually set how big you want the buttons to be. This will show you how to customize how wide you want your pinned taskbar icons.

    There's a simple registry hack and settings change you can do to do this.


    Set the options

    1. Open Taskbar properties.
    2. In the "Taskbar Appearance" group, change the "Taskbar Button" option to your liking. Select "Combine if full" if you still want stacking, "Never combine" if you don't want stacking. Note this hack won't work if you use "Always combine, hide labels".
    Adding/editing the registry entry
    1. Press Windows Key + R to open the run command
    2. Type int "regedit" (without quotes) and press OK
    3. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Control Panel -> Desktop -> WindowMetrics
    4. Find the "MinWidth" entry in the right pane.
    5. If "MinWidth" is not there, right click on an empty space and select New -> String Value. Name this entry "MinWidth" (without quotes)
    6. Double click on the MinWidth entry. If you want just the buttons to show, set this to 38 if you're using small buttons, 52 if you're using large buttons. Otherwise any value above 38 will work. If you set a value below 38, the buttons will behave oddly.
    7. Log off and log back in or restart to see the changes.
    Deleting/Uninstalling
    1. Press Windows Key + R to open the run command
    2. Type int "regedit" (without quotes) and press OK
    3. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Control Panel -> Desktop -> WindowMetrics
    4. Find the "MinWidth" entry and delete it.
    5. Log off and log back in or restart to see the changes.
       Tip
    A registry install script has been added for small or large icons and an uninstaller.


    Download












    Related Tutorials




  2. rsvr85
    Posts : 1,065
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
       New #1

    Gonna give this one a try, thanks xenol :)
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  4. Jaxel
    Posts : 22
    Windows 7 Home Premium
       New #2

    Sadly, this script doesn't do what you would really want it to do.

    What this script does is limit the size of the icon to a specific size, even if you have the setting to show text labels. If you like the text labels, what you really want is a script to limit the size of the icons when the program is NOT open.
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  5. xenol
    Posts : 2
    Windows Vista & 7
    Thread Starter
       New #3

    Jaxel said:
    What this script does is limit the size of the icon to a specific size, even if you have the setting to show text labels. If you like the text labels, what you really want is a script to limit the size of the icons when the program is NOT open.
    Regarding the text labels, I mentioned it's basically like taking them off and showing just the icon. You can set the MinWidth entry to whatever you like.

    As a side note, the MinWidth entry has been around since Windows 2000, and it apparently means the button width of a minimized window... or something. Since this only affects programs that are open, it won't affect pinned programs that are not currently running.
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  6. thundt
    Posts : 1
    Win7 Pro
       New #4

    Change icons to correct, medium size (affects toolbar including QuickLaunch)

    Right click desktop -> Personalize -> Window Color -> Caption Buttons = 21.

    May have to reboot if they appear grainy.

    cf. System tray icons got super tiny?
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  7. toxicrat2
    Posts : 8
    Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
       New #5

    This works perfectly, but is there any way I can set different programs to have different MinWidth values?
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  8. daboross
    Posts : 3
    windows 7 home premium 64bit
       New #6

    This will work for all settings except


    This works for me all times, except when i have "use small icons" checked, and I have the task bar on the left. When I either don't have use small icons or don't have the task bar on the left it works great, but, sadly, I can't get this to work with those settings D:.
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  10. nikev216
    Posts : 45
    WIN-7 x64 bit SP1
       New #7

    Large is too big at my desktop, small is too small for Windows Media Center from an armchair, is there a way to set icon size in the taskbar midway between those 2 sizes. (with browser closed)
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  11. Brink
    Posts : 72,423
    64-bit Windows 11 Pro for Workstations
       New #8

    Hello Nikev,

    Sure, you can set the MinWidth value to anything between 38 (small) and 52 (large) to see how it works. Just to note that this is for the icon width though. :)
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  12. nikev216
    Posts : 45
    WIN-7 x64 bit SP1
       New #9

    thanks, I just realized it's icon width
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